Uncertainty/unrepresentability

[Aaron Gerow]

>So why don't people know about Japanese films now?  Is there not enough 
>confidence inside the industry to warrant lots of advertising "because they 
>won't succeed anyway"? 

Again, it's an issue of industry monopoly.  The grand majority of 
theaters in the country that show Japanese films are under block booking 
contracts to the three majors, Toho, Toei, and Shochiku (though Shochiku 
recently abandonded block booking), which prevent them from showing any 
films other than those distributed by the company to which they've 
contracted.  Thus most of the great films that hit the foreign festivals 
are simply not shown much in Japan.  My favorite example is Suzaku.  It 
wins the Camera d'Or at Cannes in May, gets tons of free publicity on TV 
and the press at home, and finally opens in two theaters across the 
country in November (with some later venues after that).  There is simply 
no way films like that can get shown at the number of theaters it takes 
for regular Japanese to be cognizant of them--or to even easily see them 
if they do know about it.  

The films that do get distributed by the majors tend to be ones that are 
less artistically than commercially guaranteed: i.e., those with backing 
by major co-sponsoring corporations (especially ones that will buy up 
maeuri tickets), or by major TV and publishing companies.  In some 
occasions, like _Shall We Dance?_, this actually does bring a very good 
film to a majority of theaters across the country, but the majority are 
simply packaged films with known TV stars and preconceived plot lines.  
Especially with the maeuri system (which admittedly is definitely not 
what it used to be), these films could get by because it wasn't necessary 
for anyone to see them.  But since they are the only films that get major 
TV and print advertising (especially when a TV or media company is a 
co-sponsor), and the only ones to get major national distribution, these 
are the only films that a majority of Japanese know about.  (And they are 
heavily advertized: Mononoke, Odoru daisosasen, and Space Travelers are 
all examples of successes due in part to skilled media campaigns.)  Thus 
the reaction of Brian's friends when he showed them some good recent 
work: they simply did not know they existed because the distribution 
system made it too difficult to learn about these films.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171